Hofstadter Chapter 1
Hofstadter Chapter 1By: Audrey
Hofstadter Summary: �The Founding Fathers: The Age of Realism� Summary of Section: I The reasoning behind the Constitution of the United States is presented as �based upon the philosophy of Hobbes and the religion of Calvin. It assumes the natural state of mankind in a state of war, and that the carnal mind is at enmity with God.� Throughout, the struggle between democracy and tyranny is discussed as the Founding Fathers who envisioned the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787 believed not in total democracy, but instead saw common man as selfish and contemptuous, and therefore in need of a �a good political constitution to control him.� Being a largely propertied body, with the exception of William Few, who was the only one who could honestly be said to represent the majority yeoman farmer class, the highly privileged classes were fearful of granting man his due rights, as the belief that �man was an unregenerate rebel who has to be controlled� reverberated. However, the Fathers were indeed �intellectual heirs� of the seventeenth-century England republicanism with its opposition to arbitrary rule and faith in popular sovereignty. Thus, the paradoxical fears of the advance in democracy, and of a return to the extreme right emerged. The awareness that both military dictatorship and a return to monarchy were being seriously discussed in some quarters propelled the Constitutional framers such as John Jay to bring to attention. II Consistent to eighteenth-century ethos left the Constitution-makers with great faith in universals. They believed in an inexorable view of a self-interested man. Feeling that all me were naturally inclined to be bad they sought a compromising system of checks and balances for government. This was bolstered by the scientific work by Newton, �in which metaphors sprang as naturally to mens minds as did biological metaphors in the Darwinian atmosphere of the late nineteenth century.� Therefore Madison and others thought to squelch the possibly dangerous majority by setting up a large number and variety of local interests, so that the people will �be unable to concert and carry into effect their scheme of oppression.� And thus, chief powers went to the propertied. III Constitutional format was a series of ironical statements, as it stands in �direct antithesis to American democratic faith.� Modern America views liberty and freedom as one of the same, but the Founding Fathers thought that the liberty with which they were most concerned was menaced by democracy. In their mind liberty was linked to democracy and not property. To have political influence based on amount of property was �politic as well as just, that the interests and rights of every class should ve duly represented and understood in the public councils.� � James Madison The Convention decided that freedom for property would result in the liberty for all men. Such that the Declaration of Independence was agreed upon by the Fathers as �all men are created equal,� but only as a legal, not as a political or psychological proposition. The...
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